The Impact of Grade Incentives and Gender on Student Performance: An Experiment

Abstract

This experiment was conducted to determine the impact of grade incentives and gender on student performance at the university level. We perform a two-way analysis of variance on a sample of three groups of students taking a first-year core mathematics course and another three groups taking a fourth-year compulsory accounting course. We find that grade incentives significantly affect student performance for both sampled courses across all six groups. Gender is found to significantly affect the performance of mathematics students, but not of accounting students. The interaction between gender and grade incentives does not have a significant impact on performance in either experiment.

The effect of financial and food-based incentives on math test performance

“…Our results are consistent with other studies by Levitt et al, and Gneezy (1,4). Levitt found that financial incentives helped males and older students perform better on standardized math and reading tests (1).…”

“…This is unlike a reading test, where no matter how much the answer is desired if the reading can't be understood, no answer will be found. Also, the value placed on the student's relationship with math must be taken into account (4). For our study, we used students who have previously taken Algebra 2 or are currently taking Algebra 2, with mostly honors classes to make sure they knew the concepts tested.…”

“…What if cash or food could also incentivize performance and further increase grades for high school students? Many variables can alter the effectiveness of incentives, such as the type of incentive, amount of incentive, gender of the recipient, and the task incentivized (1,4,6). If incentives improve performance, it is important to determine how teachers can use them effectively to increase classroom achievement.…”